Celebrating the 93 years since the birth of the great Judy Garland

I am so excited to celebrate my lifetime inspiration: Judy Garland, who has touched my sould ever since I was 10 years old and introduced me to the culture of musical movies as well as showtunes and that Gershin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter music. She worked 45 years out her 47 spent on this Earth in doing 35 movies, tv shows and concerts in order to financially support her parents and then to support her three children: Official Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft Officialand Joey. This is one of her performances from the movie In the Good Old Summertime. Please, do show respect to the work of artists, as theie legacies will go on forever and will nourish our worldwide culture.

Judy Garland was interviewed by Barbara Walters on the 6th of March 1967.Judy Garland: I have not been too successful in my life, just with my children. I have had distress like many people, but I had a really nice life.Barbara Walters: I think that most people consider you as the poor little rich girl.Judy Garland: Oh, never rich. Just poor and sad.Barbara Walters: If you hand’t been an actress, what do you think you might wanted tobe?Judy Garland: Happily married and just a nice lady.Barba Walters: Do you think is possible to be an actress and to be happily married?Judy Garland: I don’t think anybody who married me thought so, but I think it’s possible. I’m not that difficult, you know. I am good cook. I think I was married when I was six months old with the music.Barba Walters: When you go out are you recognized?Judy Garland: I don’t like it too much. Somedays I like the privacy. I never looked to one single peak hole without finding someone who was looking back at me.

Barbara Walters: What are you the least tolerant of these days?Judy Garland: I am the least tolerant of any more lies or foolishness in print or spoken about me. I think people should stop. The only harm that I ever did was sing „Over the rainbow”. To be called anything that is not true I don’t like it. I’ve got to the age that I rebell and I’ve got to hit back.Barbara Walters: Are there any lies that you would like to correct?Judy Garland: Some kind of pattern of publicity started when I was very young and was becoming a famous person. This business of anybody impling that I am either addicted to drinking or pills…I wouldn’t have had time to learn a song if I had been that sick. Temperamental? I have not been able to afford to be temperamental. Nobody sues for slender, because the lawyer says just forget it. But the paper sells copies for 2 million dollars with the front page: Judy Garland admits she is broke. It is all in quotes by I am that I have never met. They must be stopped. I want the money, I want their public apology and I want them to be taken to court. I am not a member of the Mafia, I am not a cruel person, why should I be run over and why should my children be subjected to that kind of thing.

Barbara Walters: There are these rumours that you are difficult.

Judy Garland: I am about as difficult as a daisy. Now, I do have times when I get the flue and that’s when they say, well you know about her, that is not the flue. I catch a cold every now and then, but this business of being difficult is not true. I really is not true. I may be pressed for time because I was working so hard all my life. I like to laugh, I like to have a bag of popcorn going on a rollercoaster now and then. Some people are afraid to meet me. Why? I’m not going to hurt them or bite them. I like people, but they don’t call me. I have been working for 43 years now. If was as difficult or as ill, I wouldn’t have been able to be working for 43 years.Barbara Walters: I heard that you are no lonnger singing Over the rainbow. I hope that is not true.Judy Garland: Of course that is not true, that is the best song ever written.Barbara Walters: When you got your first job..Judy Garland: 30 months.Barbara Walters: What was it?Judy Garland: I was singing.Barbara Walters: Really? When you were that young? Someone pushed you on the stage?Judy Garland: My grand-mother. I sang Jingle Bells.Barbara Walters: It was that the begining of the whole career?Judy Garland: Yeah. It’s been a long one.Barbara Walters: Did you have a stage mother?Judy Garland: One that wouldn’t quit. My mother was truly a stage mother, a mean one. She was very jealous because she had absolutely no talent. Whenever I talk about her and I should because she was so wicked, she inevitably knocks one of my ear-rings off. She is still around. So, now mother you behave yourself. She would sort of stand in the wings when I was a little girl and if I didn’t feel good, if I was sick to my tummy, she’d say you get out and sing or Ill wrap you around the bed post and break you off short. So I got out and sing.Barbara Walters: When you look back to your childhood, was it any part of it that was happy?Judy Garland: I didn’t mind it too much, when I was in vaudeville. I wasn’t always a movie star, I was on stage for ten years. That was kind of fun, because Mickey Rooney was on vaudeville too and Donald O Connor. We didn’t have the pressures we later had when we got into movies. We did 19 shows a day, but I liked that better. I did not want to be in the movies at all.

Barbara Walters: Did you have dates?Judy Garland: No, I worked all the time. We worked night and day. I have never been to a prom. In those days you worked 6 days a week. And Mickey Rooney and I would work sometimes 72 hours at a time.Barbara Walters: Do you still see Mickey Rooney at all?Judy Garland: I see him whenever I can. He is the most marvelous gentleman. I think the world’s greatest talent. And the lovliest person too. We never went out together. He liked other girls.Barbara Walters: Do you still have to diet?Judy Garland: No, heavenly. Two years ago, I went on a 30 day fast. I fasted without vitamins or anything. I just had a cup of tea at daytime and a cup of tea in the evening. That seemed to sort of balance my metabolism. So I don’t think I will ever have a problem with gaining weight anymore.
Judy Garland was shortly interviewed by Mike Douglas in August 1968.Mike Douglas: Is that your first attempt of designing?Judy Garland:Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, I have always wanted to. But I did not have any courage, I just sang the songs.Mike Douglas: Everyone has a favorite Judy Garland film. Do you have a favourite of yours?Judy Garland:Yes. I think it was Easter Parade. Fred Astaire and I managed to do one thing together. We met when we were fetuses. We were both at MGM and I keep thinking that we made more than one movie together.Mike Douglas: Do you think that Hollywood will ever get back to the days when they had the star systems they had at MGM, when you were kids?Judy Garland:I think they should. I think it is awful kind of attractive. I don’t mean the work of this. I mean the actual films that came out.